The Sparks Course

When I stepped into a new semester earlier this year, with apprehensions and fears of a tough and grueling academic year ahead, little was I aware of what was in store for the entrepreneurial part of me. Amidst a lot of skepticism and doubt, a new program was launched by BITSAA in collaboration with CEL, a program set to revolutionize the way BITSians approached technology based startups. Half way down the maiden version, the program has already garnered enough accolades and appreciation and is now arguably one of the best initiatives ever on campus to support budding new entrepreneurs.

My journey began this summer with a simple idea striking me under a circumstance of necessity. I spent quite some time thinking about how my life would be greatly simplified and much more cooler if I could get my solution implemented. I dreamed and had a fairly clear picture of the final product. And at once I thought, maybe I should take the plunge and get it implemented myself. I needed to start-up with the idea. But how?

That was exactly what Sparks New Ventures, a program jointly coordinated by Mr. Abhinav Khushraj and Prof. Arya Kumar and supported by several eminent personalities and alumni around the world, addressed. The graded course with a 3-unit weight chose 4-5 bright teams through a tough evaluation process, and mentored these teams extensively to develop their business plans. The deliverable of the course included a complete business plan, a well-crafted elevator pitch for our use as well as a full length pitch deck.

The course began with an introduction on the basic art of business plan writing by our very own beloved Abhinav. In the course of time, several eminent persons from across the world delivered lectures that helped us develop different sections of our plan and learn other issues related to startups. These included:

"Market Analysis & Segmentation" by Miss Prasanna Krishnan,

" Building the Startup Team" by Mr. Nickhil Jakatdar

" Competition" by Mr. Bob Meese

"Lean Startups" by Seph Skerritt

"Product Development" by Ajay Kulkani

"Business Models" by VT Bharadwaj

The major USP of the entire program is the individual mentoring each of the teams receive from able mentors allotted to them. The mentors work closely with team helping them work on different sections of the plan and ensure that the team works in the right direction. Our team personally benefited largely from these quality mentor talks and our relationship has certainly worked wonders in building up our plan.

With half a semester left in the program, several talks to happen and more mentor meets, we are certain our business plan would take on a more solid, concrete shape. At the end of the program, based on our performance, we may also be entitled to a seed fund amount funded by BITSAA that could serve as a great boost into launching our startup.

On the whole, this program has certainly set off to a great start, and shows great prospects for the future. It may well be responsible for churning out several successful technology startups from BITS Pilani in the near future. We all hope this happens and BITS Pilani becomes the next Stanford or MIT of India.

By Nikhil R